


Enlightenment

by MToddWebster (RembrandtsWife)



Category: Andrew Hozier-Byrne (Musician)
Genre: F/M, I blame The Scarf, Inspired By Tumblr, Kissing, Light Angst, Neck Kissing, Not RPF, not not-RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 10:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19227301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RembrandtsWife/pseuds/MToddWebster
Summary: I have urges.





	Enlightenment

**Author's Note:**

> I had four one-word prompts--urge, magic, guest, enlightenment--that somehow turned into an almost-RPF story. No names are named, but we all know who I'm talking about, right? Right.

I have urges.

The urge to kiss you. Just to brush my lips against your lips, first. Then to drag my lips softly across your cheek, pausing to nuzzle your beard and inhale your scent; then to mouth along your jaw, deliberately letting the sharp prickles of hair scrape the tender skin of my mouth, until I find my way to your neck.

The urge to linger on your throat, so white and slim. To set my teeth right there and nip, sharply, see if I can make you yelp. You do, but you don't pull away, so I lick the sore spot and nip it again, more gently, less briefly. Capture the fine thin skin with lips and tongue and suck until I leave a mark, obvious enough that you'll have to cover it before you go out on stage again.

The urge to rest my head on your shoulder until you turn and kiss me, hungrily. The urge to tip my head back and yield, invite whatever you want to give. The urge to shiver as your fingers weave into my hair and cup my skull like a bowl. I am the goblet that you drink from, but you are the fountain from which I refill.

The urge to put my hands on your shoulders and hold you still as I mouth my way across your chest. The soft curling hairs there tickle instead of scraping. I push aside your shirt, to left and to right, but it's not open enough to expose the territory I'm thinking of, the delicate nipples over hard flat pecs. The hair is thicker there, I know, and so is your scent. I love the way you smell, and you're the only lover who has accepted that, who hasn't mocked me for it. I may think of you at times as my soul mate, but sometimes I think of you as just my mate, as if we were wolves curled in the intimate darkness and odor of a den, animals at home in our animal nature.

You let out a soft animal growl as I bite at your shirt, loosening another button. In a minute I'll be on my knees before you--do we have time for that? Will there ever be time enough for all the things we want to do to one another? World enough and time, and you recognize the poet's words and shake your head even as you rise to your feet and pull me with you for one last, binding kiss before the stage manager calls.

You wind a black scarf around your neck before you step into the lights.

The way that the guitar comes to life in your hands is magic. I've felt that magic in the way your hands touch me, playing me like an instrument so that I make the sounds you want to hear.

The way that the music comes through you is magic, how every time you sing a song it takes possession of you as if you were not the songwriter and the singer, but merely an instrument yourself. I see that magic when I touch you and you surrender to my hands, my mouth, my need and desire.

The way the other musicians in the band fuse their talents with yours is magic. The way different instruments create harmony or counterpoint, the way different voices blend to make a unique synthesis of overtones and undertones, the byplay between you and your bassist, you and the drummer, you and the black-hatted girl who can sing and play fiddle at the same time, and brilliantly. I've felt that magic when our bodies come together, one inside another, and our voices blend in breaths and cries and half-formed words.

I’ve been your guest on one leg of a long tour. When you leave the Midwest tomorrow, we'll fly in two different directions--me south and then east, home to the east coast, you north and west to Oregon, Washington, Vancouver. This bedroom in this house at the friend of a friend of a friend is all the time we have together.

Everyone knows who, or what, I am. Your bandmates, at least, don't talk about it. They don't talk to me, much, either, but no one is unfriendly. Tonight our hosts served two trays of excellent homemade lasagna, with garlic bread and salad and wine. We all ate a ton and joked about smelling of garlic. Your bassist remarked that it didn't matter kissing someone with garlic breath if you both had it, but he didn't look at me when he said it. Neither did you.

Face to face in the unfamiliar bed that's almost too short for your legs, almost too narrow for my hips, we do smell of wine and garlic and ricotta, but it doesn't matter. We're too full to make love, not too sleepy to make out, slow kisses and soft caresses. Your tongue teases my lips, probes into the corners of my mouth where tomato sauce lingers from dinner, flickers toward my tongue. I sigh and so do you. I fall asleep with my head under your chin, my fingers curled in your flannel shirt.

I wake when you move from between me and the wall. Our plans were laid two days ago; I know your flight leaves before mine. I won't bother showering till everyone else is gone. I lie in the dim room, half-awake, hearing the running of the shower, the rise and fall of your voice through the voices of the water. You come out naked and only half-dry, your mostly-dry hair piled on top of your head. I watch you dress and comb out your curls with the wide-toothed wooden comb I gave you on your birthday, separating the tangled locks into a shoulder-length mane.

As I start to sit up, you kneel by the bed, pressing me down with a hand on my chest. "Don't get up." Your face is soft but fierce. "Let me leave you just like this, let me remember you just like this--" Your fresh-mouthed kiss stills my breath, my will; I lie still, unable to do more than whimper as your hand roams my body, touching breasts and belly, pressing between my legs to find me hot and wet and--

"Finish yourself." I gasp as your mouth leaves mine. "Make yourself come when I'm gone, let me think about that on the bus, on the plane, that you're thinking about me and coming, I have to go--"

And you leave the room and I stay in the bed, tears trickling to the pillow even as I do what you told me and wring every drop of pleasure from the arousal you left me with, before I drift back to sleep.

The day is bright and crisp and bitterly cold when I hurry outside to catch my Lyft. The sun is just barely above the windshield as we drive to the airport, gold-white and dazzling. I close my eyes, not sleepy still, just blocking out the unbearable brightness, the sun's determination to show everything for what it is.

The airport, too, is bright, windows everywhere, lights dappling the high ceilings, no respite, no shadows. The only dim corner I can find is a cramped stall in a ladies' room, where I have a last quick cry before taking my place in the boarding line. I miss you; I will keep missing you; I know you miss me. You've already texted me at least three times; I can't bring myself to read them yet, I'll wait till I'm on the plane. The boarding line moves forward and I put my phone in my pocket, focus on the maroon wool coat in front of me.

Once I'm comfortable on the plane, next to the window with an empty seat between myself and an elderly black man, I read your texts. "I miss you already." "The tea on this flight is even worse than American tea is usually." "Let's arrange a phone call after we've both touched down." You won't touch down for long, I know, though you’ll be traveling by bus for a while. I'm going home, back to my apartment, back to my writing. My laptop is already whispering to me of projects that have been neglected, work that needs my attention.

I close my eyes tightly as the plane takes off--that part always scares me, as if some god might strike down this clumsy metal thing that’s trying to rise above its station. Once I can feel that we're actually clear of the earth, we're really going to fly, I open my eyes and look out the window, just as the plane enters a bank of cloud, impenetrable, indistinguishable pearl-white. It hardly seems like we're moving, but suddenly we're out of the clouds, still pressing upward and forward, and the sun reaches for us with long golden hands. 

Enlightenment, I think, enlightenment is seeing things as they truly are. I send you a quick text--"In the air; I miss you too."--then open up my laptop and start to write.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [rembrandtswife](http://rembrandtswife.tumblr.com) on Tumblr and I love birds and Hozier.


End file.
